Part 27 (1/2)
”_Ecco!_” she said, ”that is better! You shall not get up for luncheon, Signorina, I will bring you a tray here.”
”You are a good soul, Rosa,” said Ragna, touched by the maid's kindly attentions.
Rosa smiled cheerfully, and went out, closing the door gently behind her.
The fire had given Ragna an idea; she crept out of bed and took from her writing case Angelescu's sketch of Prince Mirko, and the portraits of him she had cut from ill.u.s.trated journals. She looked at them in turn, the handsome, smiling, indifferent face looked out from the slips of paper, as it always had, but to her it was changed. She saw now, as she had not before, the selfish hardness of the sensual mouth, the nonchalant boldness of the almond-shaped eyes, the impress of self-indulgence over the whole face. This, then, was her dream-hero, this! Have all idols clay feet, she wondered? It was more than love she had lost, more than innocence,--it was the ideal of all her girlhood, all her maiden hopes and dreams. Tears filled her eyes; suddenly she lifted the pictures to her lips, and kissed them pa.s.sionately, then das.h.i.+ng the tears away, she laid them, one by one on the fire, watched them flame up and shrivel to fluttering black rags,--and crept back to bed.
”It is over,” she thought, ”all over. I will put the past behind me, as though nothing had been; it is destroyed, as the flames destroyed the pictures. It is idiotic to pretend that one little hour of weakness can ruin one's whole life! I shall put it behind me, I shall forget it all, I shall wipe it from my memory. It shall not influence my life--except that I shall be wiser in the future.”
So said Ragna; she had yet to realize that the future is made up of the past--of a thousand pasts, that one can no more wipe a past event out of one's life, than one can discard all one's past personality, the growth of years and of circ.u.mstance, and put on a new one. Every act has it consequence, and the complex interweaving of these consequences build up what men call fate,--also we are bound as much by the consequences of the acts of others, as by those of our own,--we are bound by the acts of countless generations past. Every day that pa.s.ses, we dislodge stones that shall rebound, we know not where, or when, in the years to come, stones that shall wound men and women we will never know, who will be unconscious of our existence.
CHAPTER VII
The whole party was dull as a result of the _veglione_, following in that the general relaxation in the surrounding atmosphere.
With the evening of _Mardi Gras_, the carnival gaiety had reached its highest pitch, the flame had burnt itself out with the _moccoli_ and the reaction precipitated the city from an orgy of light and colour into the grey asceticism of fasting and prayer. Rome, for six weeks, turned her back on the World, the Flesh and the Devil. The gay crowds who had paraded the streets in mask and domino now flocked to the churches for early Ma.s.s, the charming sinner sought the confessional, and if, on Sundays, irrepressible Frivolity lifted a corner of the pall of Piety, giving the outer world a glimpse of twinkling eyes and flas.h.i.+ng teeth, Monday promptly replaced the black veil. Even the sun was keeping Lent; day after day the dawn rose on grey, sodden skies. Draggled black-robed priests plodded unceasingly through the rain, and dripping mult.i.tudes thronged the churches tramping the slime of the streets in over the marble floors.
”I've had enough of this!” Astrid complained over and over again, ”for Heaven's sake let us get to some place where the sun s.h.i.+nes!”
Estelle Hagerup had lost her enthusiasm for the Eternal City, with all the pictures covered up in the churches, and the awful weather that kept one from getting about there was nothing left to do, she declared. Even listening to a sweet-voiced gentleman in striped trousers, singing ”_Lontano del mar_” is apt to pall on one, especially if the said gentleman happens to know no other song.
To Ragna the penitential weeks were most irksome, as above all else she wished to forget, and the very spirit of the season, imbued as it was with introspection, examination of conscience, and the reviewing of past days, would, in spite of her efforts, insistently present to her mental vision that which she most desired to blot from her memory. She shunned the churches for the very reiteration of the endless litanies seemed to take possession of her thoughts and drive them in a vicious circle, round and round and ever back again to the same old theme. Pagan Rome was no better; filled as it was, with painful a.s.sociation it could afford her no relief. It was with unfeigned joy then, that she greeted Fru Bjork's decision to leave the Eternal City for Florence.
So they packed their boxes and set their faces Northward. Estelle Hagerup had proposed a stop at a.s.sisi and a deviation to Perugia, but Astrid yawningly declared she had seen enough churches to last her the rest of her life, and Ragna was too indifferent to care, so the proposition was overruled and it was decided to take the journey direct.
They drove to the railway station through a steady downpour, the rain dripped from the roofs, spattered up from the pavements, ran in streams from the umbrellas of the few pa.s.sers-by in the streets.
”Well,” said Astrid, ”if this is Sunny Italy, give me Christiania!”
They had installed themselves in an empty second-cla.s.s compartment and thought to keep it to themselves, but just as the guard was vociferating for the third time ”_p.r.o.nti!_” and ”_Partenza!_” the door was flung open and a man got in. He was of middle height, neither stout nor thin, and might have been of any age between thirty and fifty. His dark grizzled hair was brushed back from a high, rather prominent forehead, and his dark grey eyes looked out with a kindly expression from behind a gold-mounted pince-nez. He had a good nose and his mouth was firm and well modelled, though partially hid by his short moustache and dark beard. He bowed to the ladies and having bestowed a heavy valise in the rack above his head, settled himself to read a newspaper which he drew from his pocket. Ragna noticed his hands which were well-shaped and had the suppleness and delicacy of touch belonging to medical men, especially surgeons--also they were scrupulously well-kept.
The train moved out slowly over the Campagna, towards the hills, and Ragna leaned out the window, taking a last look at the city where she had left faith and innocence. As the city receded in the misty distance, the Pagan relics disappeared; the dome of St. Peter's towered mystically above the town, drawing the eye irresistibly, seeming to say: ”All else pa.s.ses, but I the Faith of the Ages, I remain.” Then a heavy curtain of rain swept down, obscuring the view, and she sank back in her seat. The train swerved round a curve, and with the change of direction the rain blew in at the open window; Ragna tugged at the strap, trying to raise it, but it resisted her efforts.
”Allow me,” said a voice over her shoulder, in French; it was the man of the newspaper. He took the strap from her hands, and with a jerk sent the refractory pane into place.
”It is a wet day,” he remarked as though he felt called upon to apologise for the climate. ”I regret that _ces dames_ should be seeing Italy in such unfavourable circ.u.mstances.”
Fru Bjork answered him. ”Indeed, we cannot complain, we have had such beautiful weather until quite recently.”
”Mesdames have been long in Rome?”
”Three months.”
”And you enjoyed the Carnival?”
”It was great fun!” interposed Astrid.
”Too much fun,” said Estelle, lowering the guide-ook she had been reading, and peering out over the rims of her spectacles. ”You look a perfect rag, Astrid, and Ragna too. Too much dissipation!”